Kerry Proven Right, Yet Again, This Time on Ohio

[Dr Ron]

From Light Up The Darkness--see original post for links
(Also cross posted at the Unofficial Kerry Blog and at Dembloggers)

Kerry Proven Right, Yet Again, This Time on Ohio
22 June 2005

I've had several posts (such as here and here) on how Kerry has been proven to be right over time on numerous election issues, such as Bush's "out-sourcing" of the hunt for Bin Laden and allowing Iraqi weapons to be stolen. Today more evidence came in that Kerry was also right despite attacks from both the left and the right on his handling of the Ohio vote.

After the 2004 election, Kerry was attacked by conservatives for stating that voter suppression influenced the election results. He has also been attacked by some liberals for not fighting more to expose what they believed was outright fraud.

A report entitled Democracy at Risk: The 2004 Election in Ohio was released today supporting Kerry's position against both types of attacks. The New York Times summarizes the report by stating, "A five-month study for the Democratic National Committee found that more than one in four Ohio voters experienced problems at the polls last fall, , but the study did not find evidence of widespread election fraud that might have contributed to President Bush's narrow victory there."

The report verifies Kerry's claims that voter suppression was a factor, and gives suggestions for future elections to reduce these problems. The lack of evidence of fraud in a this five-month study conducted by the DNC also shows that the attacks on Kerry in parts of the liberal blogosphere for not contesting the Ohio results were unwarranted.

edited to add link to LUTD post (other links there):
http://www.lightupthedarkness.org/blog/?view=plink&id=1129

[Skip Intro]

1. hmm

:popcorn:

[EFerrari]

2. Do you have a link? Because this study flies in the face of

a lot of careful work. I'd like to take a look at it. tia

[cestpaspossible]

7. The DNC website: www.democrats.org

http://www.democrats.org/vri/ohioreport/index.html

[EFerrari]

11. Thank you! nt

[helderheid]

3. double post

delete

[helderheid]

4. Ohio is only the most obvious piece in the puzzle

Kerry won Ohio, but then there would be the question about * winning the popular vote. Well my friends, he didn't. Vote padding thanks to Diebold et al is ALL states that used evoting accounted for the "popular vote" win. Unfortunately, that word came too late to the Kerry camp and for them to challenge Ohio without the popular vote win was too embarrassing. Too bad they didn't get it. It will boggle my mind for the rest of my life that the evote machines were ever allowed - they are unconstitutional.

[karynnj]

10. Not Dean's conclusion

You can't regain or even ennumerate votes lost to suppression.

[helderheid]

18. I wasn't trying to

[JHBowden]

5. I don't think Kerry gives a shit.

:hide:

[karynnj]

9. I don't see how anyone could have watched Kerry's concession

speech and came away with that conclusion. The expressions on his daughters' faces alone would tell you the truth. Kerry, who always seems totally in control of himself, was clearly struggling against tears wjhen he spoke of the people he met and talked to. He and his entire family put an incredible amount of passion, time and effort into winning. Kerry saw his own character and that of his wife viciously attacked. (Even after he released more private information about himself than has been asked of any other candidate - the media ignored the information that his naval career was as honorable and as courageous as shown in his medals.)

Note that the report backs Kerry's positions - 1) there was voter suppression and 2) There was no sufficient provable fraud to overturn the results.

[eridani]

14. How the fuck do you KNOW that?

If you don't investigate, you can't have proof. There is very well documented PROBABLE CAUSE, though.

[LittleClarkie]

25. Don McTigue

Lawsuit still pending in Ohio. Don McTigue is the lawyer's name.

Son of a bitch is stalled though. I wonder who has control of that. Blackwell maybe?

Can't investigate the evidence if you can't pry it out of their grubby paws.

Even so, lawsuit still pending in Ohio.

[eridani]

38. So, if the suit is still pending, you don't know how much fraud there was

There is no quantitative data in the report at all.

[kerrygoddess]

28. They did investigate...

There was plenty in the news to that effect.

[LittleClarkie]

32. Eeeek, FACTS!!

What are you trying to do! Kill us!

You KNOW we're allergic to those when they're mixed with Kerry news. We'll break out in hives or something.

[nonconformist]

19. "concession speech" nt

[LittleClarkie]

26. I think it was the Kids for Kerry girl that had him near tears, myself

When he went for one of his "thank you" tour events toward the beginning of the year, she was there then too. And he was trying to break down again. I remember reading about it on someone's Kos diary.

How much he cares and how much he shows of that are definitely two different things.

[Oversea Visitor]

6. Gee

:crazy: :argh:

[bilgewaterbill]

8. Well, that's it for that. nt

[truth_is_extreme]

12. lol

[autorank]

13. Here's how much I like Kerry!!!!!

Enough to have studied up on the items in this link and know, with metaphysical certainty, that he was elected President of the United States.

That's right. He was robbed. We're too polite. I only hope Ed Schulz gets a hold of this. After all, Big Eddie is calling for *'s impeachment.

It's time to tell the TRUTH. The election was stolen.

WOULD SOMEBODY OUT THERE WHO WORKS FOR KERRY OR DNC PLEASE GET THEM THIS. TIME TO WAKE UP AND CLAIM THE TITLE. IT'S ALL HERE!!!

[Dr Ron]

15. The exit poll argument doesn't hold up

The exit polls prove nothing, other than for a lot of wishfull thinking.

Even Salon had an article recently debunking the arguments regarding the exit polls:

http://archive.salon.com/news/feature/2005/06/15/exit_polls/

[autorank]

20. You've been Freeped Dr Ron. Read this response.

But first, you might actually take a look at the link. It's transparent work, outlined clearly and it can be replicated. Exit polls, not nearly as good as the ones here, are used around the world to track and remedy election fraud.

Salon's article is by a writer who proposed this theory all along and then suddenly changed his mind based on garbage analysis that is totally discredited here and elsewhere.

You give up too easily, just like our guy.

Here's the commentary and link on the Salon article.

If you really think that Bush won the popular vote this time, I'm stunned.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=203&topic_id=379092

[DFLer4edu]

40. I can't get the full artical

could somebody who can paste it into a post?

[tkmorris]

16. The DNC report backs Kerry's position???

That's an awful lot like the PNAC issuing a report that says Bush is the greatest thing since sliced bread. The DNC power brokers are likely the authors of Kerry's "position" on Ohio.

This means less than nothing IMHO.

[Dr Ron]

17. If there was fraud don't you think they would have reported it?

I really doubt that people like Dean would cover up evidence of election fraud.

People intent upon Kerry bashing will go to any lengths to distort reality.

[tkmorris]

21. Actually no, I don't

Dean's influence is just starting to make inroads at the DNC really, chairman or no. Furthermore, people in that position are amazingly reluctant to use words like "fraud", etc. especially when they cannot prove them beyond a shadow of a doubt. They are afraid to appear reckless.

The trouble is, we could use a little carefully measured recklessness now and again.

[autorank]

23. We will. It's a process not a product...wait until * drops below 40%

I predict that every point below 42% will represent an order of magnitude increase in hostility toward *. The culmination will be when he hits about 37% (Arnie's numbers in CA today). At that point, our demonstrations of election fraud, from on-the-ground to network/machine to statistical proofs, will prevail because that will be the only palatable explanation the public can offer itself for this fucking Horror Show of a presidency.

This report started before Dean left with Brazil, a good-old-Washington insider, at the helm. Without huge pressure from Ohio folks and workers from all over America, many of whom are on DU ERD, this report would have been about two pages. Good for Dean, it's a start. There are also some weasel words in the report that will allow them to say, wait, we didn't dig deep enough.

[autorank]

22. No...they took to long to catch it and they listened to their

professional, don't rock the boat bureaucrats.

If you want to know one really good reason why Kerry didn't fight it, look at where his top campaign aids ended up, all at very Republican lobbying firms, corporations. Now, ask yourself, if you're advising the boss, who relies on you, and you've got about $.5 million a year locked in, let's say forever, are you going to say, let's take to the barricades! lets fight this! Your reasoning is full of holes. Are you really a Kerry supporter? or do Kerry supporters really not care about the truth?

Just read the threads at your leisure. They're easy to follow and they can be replicated. In fact, find a friend who really knows statistics, at a high level, not behavioral or social science nerd, a true blue math nerd, show him/her these analysis, and see that they say.

There's only one reason to think that Bush won and that's being uninformed by the facts. Do the homework. Remember, we're compatriots. I worked my ass off for Kerry and so did my daughter (full time, three months). These were not his votes they were the political expression of the country, our votes.

Just read the work and get educated. You will like the results.

:hi:

[ginnyinWI]

33. thanks for the link autorank

I never go to Salon and wouldn't have know about this. I always enjoy your posts. :)

[autorank]

37. Thank you very much. Nice to meet you directly.

:hi:

[LightningFlash]

24. Kerry's position was a changing position.

"Widespread fraud" does not mean no fraud. The DNC found just the opposite, that there was fraud and it wasn't the voter fraud kind. What they did not find is "widespread" definition meme of fraud.

I think what's clear here is no one was wrong. There was fraud and supression. Was it able to change the outcome? Yes in the end it was. But saying so and proving so, are two different things. It means physically catching someone in the act. I don't think the DNC was willing to be whipped by the RNC for stating something like "Ohio was stolen" without catching the perp in the act.

Fitrakis and the lawyers in Ohio sum this one up best. http://www.freepress.org

[NewYorkerfromMass]

27. the fraud didn't equal 130,000 votes- we lost Ohio.

Excerpting from NYTimes magazine article last fall that chronicled the efforts of Steve Bouchard, an 'America Coming Together' worker, on election day. It goes into gruesome detail of how we apparently did lose Ohio fair and square:

"....As night fell, we reached the city of Delaware and found a polling place at a recreation center. The only people in the parking lot were a drenched couple holding Kerry-Edwards signs. Inside, the polling place was empty. ''Look at this,'' Lindenfeld said to me triumphantly. ''Does this look like a busy polling place? Look around. There's no one here.'' He repeated this several times, making the point that turnout in the outlying areas was tailing off, while voters were lined up around the block back in Columbus. ''Do you see any Republicans?'' he asked me, motioning around the parking lot.
In fact, a quick investigation of the voter rolls, taped to the wall outside the voting area, indicated that the polling place was dead for a less encouraging reason: most of the voters in the two precincts assigned to the recreation center had already voted.
The officials in charge told me that 1,175 of the 1,730 registered voters on the rolls had cast their ballots. In other words, turnout in those precincts was up to an impressive 68 percent, and there were still two hours left before the polls closed. (When it was over, Delaware County as a whole would post an astounding turnout rate of 78 percent, with two out of three votes going to Bush.)

I was beginning to understand that the rules of the game were changing, confounding even the experts who seemed to have this business of voter turnout all figured out. For decades, Democratic operatives had been virtually unchallenged by Republicans when it came to mobilizing voters, and during that time, they had come to rely on a certain set of underlying assumptions, all of them based on experience in urban areas. One was that the volume of activity at a polling place was a reliable measure of turnout; long lines meant higher turnout, and no lines meant disaster. Another was that the strength of a get-out-the-vote program could be gauged by the number of people canvassing city streets, the people holding signs in the rain, vans carrying voters to the polls.

But Ohio, like much of the country, was undergoing a demographic shift of historic proportions, and Republicans were learning to exploit their advantage in rapidly expanding rural areas that organizers like Lindenfeld, for all their technological innovation, just didn't understand. In shiny new town-house communities, canvassing could be done quietly by neighbors; you didn't need vans and pagers. Polling places could accommodate all the voters in a precinct without ever giving the appearance of being overrun. In the old days, these towns and counties had been nothing but little pockets of voters, and Republicans hadn't bothered to expend the energy to organize them. But now the exurban populations had reached critical mass (Delaware County alone had grown by almost one-third since the 2000 election), and Republicans were building their own kind of quiet but ruthlessly efficient turnout machine.

Even on the outer edges of the cities, long lines were not necessarily the indicators of Democratic muscle that they used to be. Returning to the headquarters in Columbus, we passed a polling place at the local fish and wildlife office, where a line of voters stretched around the building, even though the polls were closing. ''You see that?'' Lindenfeld exclaimed admiringly. To him, it was another sign of Democratic enthusiasm. When I walked over to the line a little later, however, the man who was administering the site told me that, judging from his precinct lists, the majority of voters standing in line lived in new town-house developments across the highway, and they had stopped in to vote on their way home from work. Most of them, he said, were Republicans...."

I have the full article if anyone wants a copy.

[Dr Ron]

29. Article here

http://kerrylibrary.invisionzone.com/index.php?showtopic=235&view=findpost&p=2309

This is one of the problems with insisting that the election was stolen. It makes it too easy to ignore what really needs to be done to win in the future.

Perhaps there was undetected fraud. While investigations should continue, we are best off working under the assumption Kerry really lost.

This means that it is time to stop bashing Kerry over not fighting more as even if there was fraud, if it couldn't be proven in a five month report it certainly could not have been proven in time after the election. It also means that Democrats need to face reality about real electoral problems, such as those described in this article, in order to make changes for future elections.

[PATRICK]

31. Again the NYT attacks the Dem

strategy instead of the commitment to fraud evidenced on a large scale in the RNC and media. And partly it is true that stupid assumptions born from unjustifiably unadapting habit and nostalgic blinders plagues our GOTV, our protect the vote, our campaigning period. But this rag's "analysis" is another variation of "blame Gore" and fixing the reality around the "decision".

A lot of us complained bitterly to the furious going through the motions for naive campaign strategies. Apparently the NYT was listening. Or else it was listening to the berated breast beating of campaign losers all too ready themselves to rationalize defeat as their fault, their fault, their grievous fault(but don't fire fire, like Diebold we'll do better- but not like Dean, ugh).

Rove tried to get his two cents in for this rationale only when the moral issue exit poll re-explanation collapsed of its own fake weight.

The problem was the lack of ability to protect or recount the totals in place. unlike Florida bases were covered to make that gradual attrition nearly impossible. Enough votes were tampered with and suppressed before going into tabulation to sway Ohio to Kerry. But of course who could prove that? THAT is the point NYT. This isn't the skeptic problem of proving/disproving of a myth like Santa Claus. The election itself was shut behind a dark door body blocked by Blackwell. The apparent ill will and gaming of this contest reeks to high heaven, but the refined noses of the NYT times are resonating with the timid sniffing by bewildered lousy campaign advisers. Clear your sinuses gentlemen.

The post election article Time Magazine gives the simple picture of a typical election. The it did its post election analysis based on the result to mystically interpret how Bush won our minds and hearts. Such is the blindfolded stargazing of American journalism.

And as usual there is no news, no great revelations, only dampening of just complaints and shifting blame to victims. It's your fault you lost, nyah, nyah! By the way the sage analysis is cloaked in a vague set of opinionated generality then supported by single anecdote by the reporter wisely making a fool out of our guy.

WAPO and the NYT, toilet paper fit for our King.

[LightningFlash]

41. The fraud in Ohio very easily was greater than that.

This right here proves it very well.




The problem is in convicting Blackwell's handlers. But they did manipulate the election at least 100,000 votes, which would change the outcome sadly. The problem lies in they installed two way re-write access into his office personally. Listen to Fitrakis on the radio http://www.bradshow.com

[second edition]

30. Thank you for posting the truth!

I can't think of anything Kerry has actually been incorrect about in regards to talking points and comments he mentioned during the election and right after. It saddens me to think that this is the man who actually should be running this country now.

[ginnyinWI]

34. not knowing exactly what happened shouldn't stop us

from moving forward on many fronts at once:

1. Solve the voter suppression/disenfranchisement problems with legislation, public awareness campaigns, etc.

2. Keep on looking for electronic voting machine manipulation. We have to go forward on the assumption that if it can be done, it has been done. We ignore it at our peril.

3. Impliment more and better strategies for increasing the Dem vote.
Become a stronger, more unified party with a recognized identity in the eyes of the public at large. Let them know what we stand for and believe in. Update the tired old stereotype of what a Democrat is. Then the next Dem nominee won't start out behind the game.

[KittyWampus]

36. Very Level Headed Post, It Is Appreciated

[ibegurpard]

35. Kerry was leading the charge on this?

Sorry...I'm not going to bad-mouth the guy but that's a bit of a stretch.

[WilliamPitt]

39. I hate Kerry! Up with people!

I make in my pants sometimes!

[eridani]

42. There is ZERO quantitative evidence in the report

It established nothing whatsoever about the prevalence of fraud, which can never be known unless proprietary software is made public. If we are forced to have our votes taken away from us by private interests, it is up to them to prove that they haven't cheated, not up to us to prove that they have.